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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27748549">faefather</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Random_ag/pseuds/Random_ag'>Random_ag</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Legend of Zelda &amp; Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 20:22:50</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>591</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27748549</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Random_ag/pseuds/Random_ag</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Your child is a strange one, they used to tell Link's mother.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Link &amp; Skull Kid (Legend of Zelda)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>32</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>faefather</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Your baby is a weird one, they used to tell Link's mother. When neither you or your spouse are at home, whenever he starts crying he always does so only briefly, and then calms down all by himself.</p><p> </p><p>She made nothing of it at the time.</p><p> </p><p>One night she awoke to crying, as mothers do, and she rose with eyes closed to the cradle to calm her son; but before she reached it, the crying fell silent; she opened her eyes, and the crib was empty and the window open.</p><p> </p><p>She ran outside with terrified dread.</p><p> </p><p>The sobs of an infant came to her ears and she followed them blindly into the night, towards the sleeping goats, where she saw a strange headed, strange shaped creature walking slowly towards the animals.</p><p>She shouted at it - Give him back! The strange headed creature turned to her with bright wide eyes, clutching the child close to its chest. Give it back!, she screamed, He is not yours!, and when she broke into a run to get her son back from its fiendish paws, it vanished in a puff of old leaves that cracked with the sound of small fingers breaking underneath her feet as she stomped over them in her sprint.</p><p>The strange shaped thing was sitting by a sleeping goat. It bounced the baby in its branch-like arm as it sobbed inconsolably while dipping a piece of bread in a what seemed like a little bowl of milk; it offered it to the child's little lips with its thin branch-like fingers. His mother looked as he was fed in silence, far enough away not to startle the creature playing nanny, its bright wide eyes pointed at the infant's face to make sure he was eating. She stared at the thing nursing her darling baby. She stepped forward; it stared at her. She attempted to come closer, and a cloud of beautiful dead leaves exploded at her feet.</p><p> </p><p>When she returned, Link was sleeping soundly in his cradle.</p><p> </p><p>Her baby was a quiet one, she learned - because his silent godfather heard his cries and laments, and like the wind that gallops without being seen it ran to him and satisfied his needs with an ancient kind of tenderness that feels almost out of place.</p><p> </p><p>It lives in the Sacred Grove, they told her one day. It is the spirit of but one of the many children whose name was lost between the bark and leaves of cursed woods.</p><p>They used to resemble small beaked scarecrows, they say. But this one, she knew, it looked like a puppet, clad in earthy tones, a pointed hat mounted on its round head; for she had seen it only once resting curled around her child in his crib like a furless ashen cat, and there were no such things as wooden feathers upon the doll-like body.</p><p> </p><p>What would such a creature wish to gain from a baby? </p><p> </p><p>It sang very softly the forgotten lullaby of some ancient dialect as it rocked the cradle gently. It danced with him as soon as he could move his first steps. It made straw dolls to put in his arms as he slept. It kissed his temple with its misshapen mouth.</p><p> </p><p>She observed it in the dying sun.</p><p>It looked at her in the eye.</p><p> </p><p>It vanished into the Grove just as suddenly as it had appeared from it when Link began to sleep in a real bed.</p><p> </p><p>He never did get rid of those small straw dolls resembling beaked scarecrows.</p>
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